


Devil Breaks Both Your Hands, Takes Your Stuff and Runs Away

by HarveyWallbanger



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Blood, Canonical Character Death, Dreams, Gore, Hallucinations, Incidental heterosexual content, Just about every horrible thing you can imagine, Other, Sexual Fantasy, What amounts to necrophilia, implied animal death, wound-fucking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 04:31:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10734168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: How the other half lives.





	Devil Breaks Both Your Hands, Takes Your Stuff and Runs Away

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this story comes from a line in the song Can't Go Wrong Without You, by His Name Is Alive.  
> I'm really rather at a loss as to how to tag this story. While it may not be as bad, in your estimation, Dear Reader, as I make it out to be, please err on the side of caution. If you have a feeling that this story might upset you, please don't read it.  
> I am not involved in the production of Gotham, and this school is not involved in the production of Gotham. No one pays to do this. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

When you're awake, you might be the captain of your will, but when you're asleep, you're nothing. You're snoring meat and twitching organs, reduced to a creature, with no mind, at all. In dreams, the will fizzes and foams up, fading to phosphorescent fumes. And you, undulating on an opalescent ocean.  
If Edward's honest with himself, it's kind of a relief. Every great mind needs to uncoil, to massage itself into quiescence and gather inspiration. Perhaps, the greater the mind, the greater the release that's needed. He's looked into lucid dreaming, hypnagogic states, but, really, he'd prefer to just let go. It's the only time he can, really. He's aware that he's dreaming, but he's prepared to just let it happen. He's willing to be surprised.  
Out of the shimmering gloom, she drifts. She's difficult to see, but he'd know the feel of her anywhere. She's Kristen, but she's Isabella, but she's both, but she's neither. Someone entirely of his own creation. Melting warmth fills his chest like blood pouring back into a wound, in reverse. He was broken, but she's made him whole. The room is too bright, and he can't seem to move the way he wants to, but it's okay, because she's there, and if she's there, nothing bad can happen to him. He feels her around him, warm and wet. It's like when he used to lie on the shore when his parents took him to the beach as a kid; the waves took him in, and then spat him back out again, dragging over his body. Sometimes, he imagined letting them pull him all the way out to sea.  
She's made of champagne-colored light and mauve shadows. Her breasts. Her eyes. Her mouth. Her hands. He feels his hands reach up to her hips, down her thighs. It's sweet, but it hurts. It never hurts like this when he's awake. Sometimes, he thinks that he might like it better, this way, the way that it happens in his dreams.  
He loses her.  
The room is gray, the shapes in it are flat. He touches himself through his pajamas. He could let it go, or he could chase her through his mind. It wouldn't be the same, though. If it's in a dream, it's like it's really her fucking him. If he's awake and thinking about her, it's just him. She lives in his head, but it's not a real life.  
“Don't I know it,” comes a voice from the corner of the room.  
Involuntarily, Edward gasps, and yanks the sheets higher up, over himself. “Who's there?” he demands.  
Oswald staggers out of the shadow. “Who do you think it is?” he sneers.  
“You're a ghost,” Edward says, then instantly feels stupid. He sits up and points at Oswald, “You- you can't be here! I stopped taking the pills!”  
Oswald rolls his eyes. As he comes closer, the scent of the river uncoils around him. Edward can almost see the light on the water, hear the seagulls overhead. “Yes, Edward, because massive sustained doses of psychoactive substances never, ever have mid-range to long-term effects on neurochemistry,” he jabs his finger into his head, “Wake up!”  
“I am awake,” Edward says weakly, “Well, what do you want, then?”  
“Want?” Oswald laughs, “You tell me. I'm in your head. What do you think I want?”  
Edward frowns. “Oh, no,” he says, his voice creeping up his nasal cavity in annoyance, “That's just too much.”  
“On some level, you must not think so. I'm in your head. You made me.”  
“You're nothing but a collection of memories.”  
“Yeah, Edward- that's what a person is.”  
“Well, you can forget about it.”  
Oswald sits at the foot of the bed.  
“Hey!” Edward yelps, “Great, now the sheets are wet. I hope you're happy.”  
“Being a hallucination means never having to say you're sorry.”  
“Oh, just go away,” Edward says, “I don't want to see you anymore. Be gone. I banish you,” he adds. Just in case this really is a ghost. All scientific thought renders it impossible, but there are more things between heaven and earth, Edward knows.  
“Fine,” Oswald huffs, “I'll be back, though.”  
He stands, drifts backward into the shadows.  
By now, the sun has come up. The light in the room is the color of newly-cleaned bone.

If it were with a man, it wouldn't be with him, Edward grumbles to himself.  
Maybe that's the answer. Maybe, subconsciously, he's been wondering what he's missing. It's natural. Everyone gets curious. Some schools of thought posit that most people are bisexual. Edward thinks that this is going a little far, but it's not strange to think about it. How can you know who you are, if you don't first know who you aren't?  
It's all right. He's safe. He's alone in his room. Even if someone could see him, they'd have no idea what he's thinking. That, alone, is exciting. He thinks of the old days, at the precinct. No one had known who he truly was. He hadn't even known. At the time, it was terrifying, but when he thinks about those days, it's not without, grudging, affection.  
Jim is the natural choice. He's attractive. Even someone with no sexual interest in him can see that. Some might say that he'd be better looking if he smiled more, but Edward always liked that about him; how concerned he looked. It showed that his mind was working. Some people at the precinct looked like they never thought, at all.  
Unbidden, Harvey comes to mind- but that's not weird. Jim was always with Harvey. How many times did Edward smell the alcohol sweating out of Harvey? How many times did Harvey unnecessarily raise his voice, push his big body into Edward's space, say something that could have been left unsaid? Men are always behaving that way. It makes it difficult to think anything good about them. How do women do it?  
Edward smiles. There's an answer to every question, even those you don't know how to ask. Lucius Fox has a soft, thoughtful expression. His voice is gentle, and his speech patterns indicate that a cultured upbringing led to an adulthood of erudition. His eyes look right through you. You want him to like what he sees. Edward imagines that his hands are soft, but calloused in places. He's an engineer, after all. He's both a gentleman and a scholar. It's easy to see why women would like him. Certain men, too. If it were with a man, Lucius would be the perfect choice. He'd know exactly what to do. It wouldn't matter if Edward were at a total loss.  
“Spare me your Harlequin Romance fantasies,” Oswald laughs.  
“Who asked you?”  
“Why, you did, Edward. Why else would you summon me?”  
“'Summon me',” Edward snorts, “like you're a demon.”  
“Your personal demon.”  
“That's nice. Go away.”  
“Make me.”  
“I just did. You're in my head, you have to do what I say, so, go,” he waves his hands, “Shoo.”  
Oswald stays where he is, a stain on the room. A stain on life. Sighing angrily, Edward gets out of bed. This is ridiculous, but it might work. “I said, Go.” He puts up his hands, expecting them to fall through air, but he contacts something solid. Beneath his fingers, he feels wet wool, flesh and bone. He draws in a breath.  
“Was that an unpleasant surprise?” Oswald asks.  
“You're dead,” Edward whispers.  
“No shit.”  
“How can you-”  
“Congratulate me- I've been promoted to tactile hallucination.”  
“No.”  
“Oh, yes,” Oswald says, showing his teeth.  
“Just go,” Edward says, “Please.”  
“I don't have to go anywhere. You let me in, remember?”  
“Vampire,” Edward whispers.  
“You don't believe in them.”  
“No. I suppose not.”  
“If you're really interested, I could do it for you.”  
“In vampires?”  
“No,” Oswald shakes his head, crossing his arms over his chest, “No, Edward. In men.”  
Edward makes a face. “No, thanks.”  
“It's not queer if it's a figment of your imagination.”  
“That's okay.”  
“Your loss,” Oswald says, with a shrug. The shadows again envelope him.  
After a moment, Edward steps forward, stands where Oswald stood. Around him, it's just empty space.

But Edward's not that desperate. In his life, he's been extremely desperate, but not that desperate. It's Oswald who's desperate- though, for what, Edward can't imagine. The dead have no needs. It's the one compensation for being dead.  
All night long, now, Edward hears Oswald. Sometimes, he hums the song that Gertrud used to sing to him. Sometimes, he tries, futilely, to engage Edward in conversation. Sometimes, he merely coughs, clears his throat. Edward wakes many times in the night, but it's always easy to fall asleep again to the sound of Oswald's afterlife.  
This has been a particularly fitful night. The sky outside is beginning to turn gray, and sleep is pointless. Edward's turned away from Oswald, but can hear him. “Why me?” Edward asks.  
“What's that?”  
“Why did you want me?”  
“Why do you think?”  
“Just tell me,” Edward sighs.  
“I literally cannot answer that question, Edward. I'm a voice in your head. Oswald, the real Oswald, is at the bottom of the river. Of his bones are coral made. Those are pearls that were his eyes. And, y'know, fish have eaten his face.”  
“Stop it.”  
“Sharks come up the river. Did you know that? Of course you did. Have you ever seen what a shark can do to a body? Yes, Edward, you have. Do you think they'll ever find him? Or part of him, I should say. Maybe, one day, a fisherman will catch a shark, and when they're skinning it, to have it stuffed, they'll open up its stomach, just for fun, and find a hand, or something. Didn't Oswald have such small hands? Almost like a girl's. They were soft, too.”  
“How do I know that?”  
“It's not rocket science. You looked at him a lot more than you thought you did. Oh, don't worry- it's not queer if you're gathering information to later exploit for your own purposes. Of course you noticed his hands. Maybe it'll be a whole arm. Maybe up to the shoulder. You could identify it by the gunshot wound you stitched up.”  
“Stop.”  
“Admit that you miss me, and I'll stop.”  
“You know that I do,” Edward says into the pillow.  
“Miss me with your body, Edward; not just your mind. When you miss me, it's with everything you have.”  
Edward says nothing.  
“Well,” Oswald sighs, “it's really for the best. He's with his mother and father, now. He's probably never been happier. He had a miserable life. Parts of it, though, were good. Toodle-loo, Edward.”  
“Don't go,” Edward finds himself saying. If it's hallucination, it's as good as a dream, and in a dream, you have no will. You're nothing. You're just a body. You might as well be dead.  
Don't think that.  
“Yes?” Oswald says irritably but blandly, like Edward's just asked for something inconsequential. Like this isn't killing Edward. Like Edward is nothing at all. It makes it all right to ask again.  
“Please stay.”  
“Stay, and do what?”  
Edward can't see him, but he knows that Oswald comes closer. The smell of the river tells him so. “Do what he wanted to do.”  
“I'll stain your sheets.”  
Edward rolls over, looks at Oswald. “I don't care,” he hisses, teeth grit.  
Oswald smiles. His teeth don't look at all like fangs. His skin isn't transparent. He looms over Edward, turns him onto his back. He kisses him. Edward smells the river. He smells corruption, and chemical waste, and trash, and the ocean, far away, waving to him, inviting him to sink his flesh into its embrace. He sees the sun on the water. He hears the birds overhead. He pulls Oswald down on top of him. The smell of amonia is stifling. It's the smell of the morgue in the precinct. No matter how thoroughly it was cleaned, it retained the smell of dead flesh. Everyone complained, but Edward didn't mind. That kind of thing has never bothered him. When he was a kid, his father drove over a dead animal, and it got caught within the car's machinery. Edward's mother demanded that his father take it to a mechanic, but she protested too much and too loudly, so Edward's father left it alone, to spite her. It wasn't a company car, just the family car, he sneered, so it didn't matter what was rotting in it. For months until it completely decayed, the smell of the animal rose through the vents. Edward's mother refused to sit in the car, but Edward did so, gladly. It was a curious smell. It sent him to the library, to look up the stages of putrefaction.  
He wraps his arms around Oswald, and feels the water soak into his pajamas. “Take them off,” he whispers.  
Oswald doesn't have to ask him what he means. It's like in a dream about Kristen- but Edward's awake. Even awake, it feels like it's Oswald doing it. His hands are as soft as Edward always imagined they'd be.  
He's wet and he's cold, against Edward's naked body. Edward shivers. It's jarring, disgusting, but novel sensations are always worthwhile.  
“Can you take off your clothes?” Edward asks.  
Oswald shakes his head. “You don't know what I look like naked.”  
“Yes, I do,” Edward says, and in saying it, he must be making it so, because only then does he actually remember. He remembers- what feels like a hundred years ago- cleaning Oswald's wound and stitching it up, looking over his body for traces of his criminal life. No tattoos or piercings, no evidence of intravenous drug use, surprisingly little scarring. His skin was like an unrippled body of water. None of his life was on the surface. It was all underneath. Edward couldn't wait for him to wake up, so that he could talk to him, learn all about him.  
The hole in Oswald's abdomen won't stop bleeding. “Sorry about that,” Oswald says dryly.  
“Can I touch it?”  
Oswald shrugs. “You made it.”  
Edward reaches out with a finger, but puts his whole hand over it.  
“It'd take more than that to close it up, but it's a sweet thought.”  
“Please don't say things like that.”  
“Why not? It's true. Lick your fingers. You know you want to.”  
Edward looks away. Oswald turns Edward's head back toward him, and kisses him again. The blood that seeps from Oswald's wound is warm. It could be another fluid, altogether, dripping down Edward's belly.  
“I know what you're thinking,” Oswald whispers against his ear.  
“Of course you do.”  
“Do it.”  
Edward winces. “I can't.”  
“I'm dead, Edward. You're not going to hurt me any worse than you already have.”  
“It's sick.”  
Oswald laughs. “It's a little late to develop self-awareness, Edward.”  
“I-”  
“Fine. I'll do it for you.”  
Oswald leans back, straddles him. It's like a dream. Edward can't speak. He can't move. He can only watch as Oswald wraps his hand around Edward's cock, and guides it toward the red void in his body. Looking down, face severe in concentration, he rubs the head of Edward's cock in the spilled blood, moves it up to the wound. It's warm, and it's wet. Edward bites his lip. He closes his eyes.  
“Now, now,” says Oswald, “looking's half the fun.” He gives Edward a little slap.  
If he has to watch, it's not his fault that he likes it. That it feels even better when he's watching it happen. Oswald moves forward. This must be horrible for his leg. Edward had forgotten all about it. On cue, Oswald flinches as he rests his weight on his knee, and lets the tip enter his wound. Edward moans.  
“That's enough of that,” Oswald says primly.  
Before Edward can say anything, Oswald goes down on him. Does it bother Oswald, that he's tasting his own blood? After all of this, Edward thinks, it must not. How can it? How can there be anything left to bother either of them? To bother Edward- because Edward's the only one in the room, in the world. And Edward is dead. He's just a body, waiting for corruption, to completely disappear.   
He comes in Oswald's mouth.  
The world dissolves into water.


End file.
